How to Freeze a Violin
by The Mangosity
Summary: A mission helping Mulan in The Land of Dragons goes horribly wrong, leaving Sora stranded in the middle of a blizzard. He has no idea how to get back to the main town, and he doesn't know if he'll survive. The only thing that keeps him pressing forward is the thought of being able to play his beloved violin one last time.


It's been so long since I wrote anything for _Kingdom Hearts _that wasn't a drabble! A friend, Dookaller, challenged me to write this based on a certain something. The moment I saw it, I thought, "Yes. The setting will be the snowy place on the Mulan world. Nothing will stop me." I won't tell you what that certain something was, but you might figure it out by the end!Heck, you might have figured it out already! Enjoy!

* * *

How to Freeze a Violin

_A mission helping Mulan in The Land of Dragons goes horribly wrong, leaving Sora stranded in the middle of a blizzard. He has no idea how to get back to the main town, and he doesn't know if he'll survive. The only thing that keeps him pressing forward is the thought of being able to play his beloved violin one last time._

It was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance mission, a quick scan of the northern snow banks above the capital city. According to rumor, a band of ex-Hun rebels had set up camp there, and the Imperial Army could not risk that such a threat existed in the emperor's backyard. With a search party that included Mulan and Sora, two of the best warriors to ever set foot in China, the Imperial Army was certain that the search would take no more than half a day to complete. It was right, at least as far as the search itself was concerned.

But the army never could have foreseen that a centaur Heartless would emerge from the snow peak that day. The army never could have foreseen the way the Heartless brought a curved horn gracefully to its lips, the way it blew out a blast of sound to call its Heartless brethren.

No one could have foreseen the subsequent avalanche, a worse avalanche than the one that cut through the Huns' ranks all those months ago.

As Sora runs for dear life from the once-peaceful mountainside, praying that he'll find some sort of cover before the roaring white menace crushes him alive, he realizes that he's going to be spending a lot more time up here in these mountains then he originally intended to.

"This is going to be a long day."

* * *

As the proud owner of Khan, the horse that was born with an uncanny level of snowfaring ability, Mulan has the best chance of reaching Sora before the avalanche does. She spurs the horse on harder than she ever has before, willing him to reach their destination before it's too late. They've always shared a link, a bond that she's felt with no other horse before. They truly understand each other, and right now the horse understands that it's of vital importance for them to get wherever they're going as fast as they can.

With all of his strength, Khan gallops against the rushing avalanche, his powerful legs propelling them forward as Mulan scrutinizes every last inch of the surrounding scenery. She knows she's getting close to the area that Sora was assigned to, and she's positive that if she sees him, she'll know it. Dressed in pitch black the way he is, he'd be pretty hard to miss.

So far all she sees is a jagged boulder halfway up the mountain, a pitiful excuse for a rock that's hardly peeking above the snow. It's not until she gets closer that she sees the figure pressed against the rock face.

"Sora?" she calls, hoping beyond all hope that it's a trick of the light, that her friend isn't caught in such a dangerous position. Her stomach drops as Sora lifts his forehead and whips around to look at her with wide eyes. She can see his mouth forming her name, but she can't hear his voice over the thunder of the avalanche.

"Hold on!" Mulan yells, hoping that he'll be able to hear her. "I'm coming!" She doesn't need to give a shout for Khan to quicken his pace and bolt straight for Sora.

The closer she gets to the boulder, the more she fears for Sora. He's just barely clinging to the short, wide rock face, eyes clouded by a terrified expression she's seldom seen him wear. It seems like he'll get dragged off by the heavy flow at any second.

"Grab my hand, Sora," she shouts, extending an arm once she's in range.

"I…I can't," Sora coughs through a mouthful of snow. "I'm slipping!"

"You can do it! I know you can!"

After a long moment Sora reaches a tentative hand out to meet Mulan's, but their fingers hardly graze. They try again, and this time Mulan makes certain to get a firm grip on Sora's hand. Just when she thinks she has enough leverage to yank him up onto the horse, Sora's body gets too close to the rushing snow. He screams as the avalanche makes quick work of sweeping him out of her reach.

"No! Sora!"

Mulan's shriek is lost to Sora as his head dips down below the surface of the snow. He struggles to stay afloat, limbs flying everywhere, but as Mulan looks on in horror, she's certain that her young friend won't be able to survive this one. She's about to shut her eyes and look away when she spies a bright light suddenly twinkling up from beneath the snow. It dawns on her that Sora has worked some kind of magic to try and save himself.

With more determination than ever, Mulan grounds herself in the saddle and pulls at her horse's reins, steering him toward the encampment at the base of the mountain. There, Shang and the other members of the search party will be waiting with baited breath for news on Sora.

She grips the reins and grits her teeth. The warrior of the worlds is not going to fall today. Not on her watch.

* * *

The snow tumbles over Sora, squashing his ribs and squeezing the air out of his lungs, and he thinks for sure that he's going to die. Luckily for him, it's usually around this point that something miraculous happens to save him, and right on cue (the cue being his spine's near breaking point) something does.

A burst of light that stings even his own eyes shines forth from his clothing, and all at once he's enveloped in a pocket of heat, the snow slinking off of him as the avalanche continues to push him further downhill.

He has no idea how it happened.

Sora can't take credit for the amazing acts of his clothing. The three good fairies never actually explained how his magical outfit works, but he figured out very quickly that it has a mind of its own. It tends to do all kinds of incredible things by itself, especially when he gets into life-threatening situations. One of those things is apparently shielding him with a magical energy field so that an avalanche doesn't crush his bones.

All things considered, Sora almost wishes that his clothing hadn't decided to do anything just yet. He's sure he would have thought of something before it got to be too late, and if the past is any indicator Sora knows that he's going to pay for this sudden burst of magic later. It'll be just like the time he decided to put all of his magical energy into dune surfing while he was in Agrabah, only in reverse, and with a lot more at stake. Sure enough, as the avalanche slowly comes to a halt and the field of heat around him begins to dim, Sora can feel the snow beginning to seep through his outfit's weakened protection. It's just as bitingly cold as he always heard it was. As if sensing his discomfort, his clothes exert one final surge of energy, and the snow melts in a neat circle around him.

The sight Sora sees fills him with dread. The horizon is a blurry mess of white, he has absolutely no idea where he is, and he doesn't know how to begin trying to figure out how to get back to town.

"Well, first things first," Sora sighs. He gets to his feet and reaches into his pocket to pull out one of the various concoctions he carries around with him. He plugs his nose and takes a deep sip. Instantly the bitter cold retreats as his clothing continues to protect him from the snow, but he knows it won't last long. Donald's special brew is only meant to give a short boost of magic, and it's only a matter of time before his clothing runs out of magic all together, leaving him at the total mercy of the elements. To make matters worse, he spies the fledgling beginnings of what he hopes will be gentle snow.

With a heavy heart, Sora decides to head downhill. If his barely formed internal map of the area can be believed, the avalanche pushed him down toward the southern path that leads into town. He only hopes he can get there before his clothing abandons him or a serious snowstorm hits. Or both.

* * *

Sora realized soon after leaving his island home that the Destiny Islands are perfect in every way, a paradise unlike any world he's ever visited. One aspect of his paradise that he now knows to be thankful for is the fact that it never snows there. Ever. When he first came to The Land of Dragons, it was his first time experiencing winter of any kind. He enjoyed every minute spent making misshapen snow angels and frolicking through snow banks and touching every icicle he could find. After all, while under the magical protection of his clothing, he didn't need to worry about getting frostbite or hypothermia, or even feeling like the temperature had dropped to anything remotely close to freezing.

As the side of his face collides painfully with the snowy ground, he can safely say he'll never use the word "freezing" in hyperbole ever again. An hour spent helplessly wandering the snowy countryside while his protection against the cold slowly waned away taught him the true meaning of the word. He realizes now that this is nothing like the dunesurfing incident in Agrabah. At least then he was close to the royal palace, where an understanding though reproachful Jasmine was willing to put up with him.

Right now he's fairly certain that he's nowhere close to anyone who can help him, and he thinks that his internal map of the area might never have existed in the first place. He hasn't seen head or tail of the main road he thought he would run into, nor has he even caught a glimpse of town in the distance.

To top things off, the weather has not been kind to him.

What started out as a light snow has turned into a raging blizzard, covering everything in a cloak of blinding white. He tries desperately to hang on to the last shred of warmth his garments can afford him, curling into himself and calling a burst of flames to his hands, but far too soon, the last of his magical energy leaves him. Without any magic backing it up, his outfit barely serves to protect him against anything, and the snow easily begins to soak his bare skin.

"I have to keep moving," Sora decides firmly, and it startles him to see that his breath comes as a thick mist. That's never happened before. He sighs. The sooner he gets out of this snowy mess, the sooner he can go back to being blissfully unaware of the finer details of arctic weather.

With some effort, he manages to get to his feet and stagger off in some random direction, all hope of rewarming himself rapidly slipping away. He tries to think of something other than the copious amounts of snow all around him, something warm to get his mind off his current freezing predicament. The fact that he's surrounded by copious amounts of snow makes this difficult.

Despite how hard it is to have a single warm thought, one that doesn't get dashed to bits by a wayward chunk of ice, his mind manages to come up with a great compromise. He thinks about the first time he ever learned about snow.

To this day, he still has a vivid image in his mind of a six year old Riku pumping his fist in the air and shouting, "Snow, Sora! The dreaded foe of any islander!" The young Riku read far too many pirate novels.

"Snow?" Sora asked, looking up from his crudely made sandcastle. It stood to be destroyed by late evening with how close it was to the shore. "What's that?"

Riku sat beside him to start work on an equally doomed castle of his own. "It's cold and white and falls from the sky, and it gets _everywhere_." He grabbed a handful of sand and let it slip though his fingers. "If snow ever got here, it would change the weather to cold and ruin all our lives."

"Oh," Sora said flatly. "That's sounds bad. Riku?"

"Yeah?"

"What's a dreddedfoh?"

At that point Riku changed the topic of their conversation to the cons of having a limited kindergarten vocabulary and the doors that open up once you move on to the first grade, and Sora laughs at the memory. It does little to warm his body, but it certainly warms his heart.

It doesn't, however, do a thing for the fact that his foot is currently suspended over nothing. His body tilts forward as he realizes too late that he's veered off the edge of the path, that the path even has an edge to be veered off of. Cold as he is, Sora finds that his senses have slowed down a bit, but he somehow has the mind to position himself the way Riku told him he should if he ever found himself tumbling down a steep incline. He tucks his arms in and scrunches his eyes closed, trying not to think about the bruises that are going to form as his body smacks painfully against the ground. As the land levels out, he slowly comes to a halt, shaken, but unharmed for the most part.

Even once he feels able to, Sora doesn't get up from the spot. Suddenly he feels there's no point in continuing on, in searching blindly for the town that he probably passed eons ago without knowing. Then just as suddenly he feels a pang of guilt as he thinks of his friends Riku and Kairi. Before leaving to go on this mission, he told them he would be back home in no time at all. If he breaks that promise, there'll be so much left undone and unsaid. He'll never get to share a paopu with Riku, and he'll never get to beat up Kairi for failing to mention that snow actively tries to _kill_ you.

No wait. Unless he wants to get beat up by every guy on the island, he doesn't want to lay a finger on Kairi, and sharing a paopu with Riku is not a thing he wants to do. Definitely not a thing he wants to do. Right.

With a groan and a shake of his head to try and clear it, Sora sits up slowly and pulls his legs to his chest in a meager grab for warmth. In an attempt to rekindle his morale, he closes his eyes and imagines his friends' smiling faces encouraging him to carry on. He imagines his parents going about their day and believing whatever excuse he asked Riku to make up for them. He imagines his bedroom, the tiny space he has no problems calling his own, though his mother tells him every day that he's outgrown it.

He imagines his violin propped lazily against his bed frame, small, elegant and crafted from the finest paopu wood available. His eyes shoot open.

If he perishes out here, that violin will forever remain silent, a cruel reminder to everyone who knows him that he walks the earth no more.

With a grunt, Sora pulls himself up onto wobbly legs, and he begins to walk. The snow swirls violently around him, the wind howls loudly in his ears, and he has just about as much of a clue where he's going as he did when he first set out into this vast unknown snowy landscape, but this time he has a purpose. He will play that violin again.

And then, as if by magic, his violin is there right in front of him, the bow crossed in front of it as it glows majestically just within his reach. He knows it has to be an hallucination, knows the cold must finally be getting to him, but if playing this phantom violin is what it takes to get him back home to the real thing, then as Mickey is his witness, he'll play his heart out.

He reaches out with one hand to curl his fingers delicately around the neck of the instrument, and with the other he grabs the bow to play a test note. It comes out beautifully, a clear, pristine sound that bounces and echoes off the snow banks and the distant mountain. Sora laughs. It sounds better out here in the middle of this raging storm than it ever did in the rec center studio.

With his violin in his hands, Sora suddenly feels invincible. Before he knows what's happening, he's launched into a fierce melody, a song that sets his soul on fire. It drives him forward into this terrifying storm without a shred of fear. He plays from his heart, fingers flying deftly over the notes, bow gliding gracefully over the strings, and it's…sweet, like a paopu fruit drenched in syrup. The music is practically alive as it pours out of him. It fills the space around him with a radiant heat, fills him with something he's tried time and time again to explain to Riku, but he's never been very good with words. _This_ is his domain. If music were the way people communicated in their everyday lives, he would be a master orator.

Very slowly the orchestra emerges. Sora finds himself in the very throngs of ecstasy, tips his head back and lets the music drown his senses. It tells him where to go, warns him when he's veering close to danger.

_Don't go that way. It's another drop off._

_Watch your footing. The ice is slippery here._

_Duck down. There's an icicle up ahead._

With the music by his side, Sora has a clear image of where he needs to go. It guides him through the formidable storm like it's nothing, until he finds himself leaned against the crook of a tree. Up ahead he sees a black blur on the horizon, what looks like dark wood and chimney smoke.

"Town?" Sora mutters aloud, the word sliding drunkenly off his tongue. He lowers the violin to his side and begins to shuffle toward the sudden chance at safety, but stops as the music whispers in his ear.

_No. It's a lie. It's not real. _

Sora groans and runs a shaky hand over his eyes, and when he looks again, the space before him is just as white and empty as it was before. It suddenly hits Sora that even the music doesn't know where he needs to go. It can keep him away from trouble and guide him away from danger, but if he doesn't know where he's going, the music can't tell him.

With a sudden fire in his eyes, Sora straightens up and places the bow at the ready on the strings. He waits for his cue, waits for the music to tell him what to play. It might not be able to get him out of here, but it can keep him safe, keep him moving, and right now maybe that's good enough.

He smiles as the music begins to creep over the mountaintops, a distant slew of electronic chords that jerks him back the way he came. His bow slides over the strings to play the first notes and he feels an abrupt calm. The snow can try to chill him all it wants, but the music can take him places the cold can only dream of penetrating.

Before he knows it he's playing at a lightning pace and he no longer cares that he's trapped here in this godforsaken blizzard. He doesn't care that he may never see his home again, doesn't care that he may never have a single warm thought for the rest of his life. His violin has come here to be with him in his final moments, and that's all that matters.

_Sora_

The music whispers to him like he's a child, lifting him up on a surging wave of thought and emotion and broken promises that turn out all right in the end. It comforts him with soothing words and the exhilarating prospect of unlimited opportunity. It takes control of him like a tantalizing dream, his body contorting in ways he never even knew it could.

_Sora_

His name is tender on the music's tongue. Its lyrical voice makes him feel like he doesn't need a heading, like he doesn't need anything in this world to make his existence worthwhile. He just needs to be and that will be enough for the music. He doesn't need to swear allegiance to it though he already has. He doesn't need to be anything he's not. The music loves him for who he is and he loves the music, and no matter what happens–

"SORA!"

Out of nowhere a beast materializes in front of him, rearing up on its hind legs and snorting a gust of mist into Sora's face, and with a scream Sora keels over backwards.

The music comes to an abrupt end.

Before Sora can wrap his mind around what just happened, he's being yanked up from the snow and a large winter coat is being squeezed around him.

"I almost thought we wouldn't find you," someone murmurs into his ear, and as they draw away he's vaguely aware of a stream of light jetting into the sky and bursting into a firework of color. "Now the others will know I've got you." He feels heavy hands at his shoulders. "Are you hurt, Sora?"

Sora opens his mouth and tries to say something relevant, but only manages to croak a soft, "Mulan."

With concerned eyes Mulan takes him by the shoulders and leads him over to Khan. "Let's get you back to base. Warm drinks and a doctor are waiting for you." The horse kneels down gently so that Sora can climb on more easily. "The avalanche pushed you all the way down to the valley. It's so far away we almost weren't going to look down here."

Sora grunts a response as Mulan mounts in front of him, and soon they're traveling swiftly up the incline. Sora is not usually one to make advances of the physical nature on the opposite sex, but right now he is in the process of freezing to death. So, careful not to make Mulan want to slap him, he leans his forehead against the back of her shoulder and hugs her for dear life, pulling the coat tighter around his body as he does so.

"Mulan?"

She's focused on the task of navigating her horse through the thick sheet of snow, but she spares him a quick, "Hm?"

"I want you to teach me to play the erhu."

"Really?" It's clear by her tone that she thinks he's talking out of his head.

"Yeah. I think I'd be really good."

After a long pause, Mulan says, "They have a few erhus back at camp. I can teach you when you're well, if you're still up to it."

"I will be," Sora mutters lazily, and with that he lets his body fall into rhythm with the horse, a cacophony of violins and electronic beats following him all the way back to camp.

* * *

And that's how you freeze a violin. Let me know what you think! Until next time!


End file.
